Spiritual Sunday
With much of the country groaning under the weight of winter storms, I share a Robert Hayden poem in which the speaker calls out to God in his misery.
I warn you the poem does not conclude with a comforting—or a facile—promise. Sounding very much like George Herbert in his inability to pray, the speaker accuses God of treating people worse than trees. After all, trees “survive their burdening” and “broken thrive” whereas he, in the depths of his depression, sees no such hope.
Hayden surely has in mind Robert Frost’s “Birches,” which talks similarly about the impact of ice storms:
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves…
Later in the poem Frost returns to the theme of life’s heaviness as he dreams of being an innocent child again:
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
Is there any comfort for those bent over by life’s ice storms? God at the very least provides us with someone to complain to. God can handle our venting.
Ice Storm
Unable to sleep, or pray, I stand
by the window looking out
at moonstruck trees a December storm
has bowed with ice.
Maple and mountain ash bend
under its glassy weight,
their cracked branches falling upon
the frozen snow.
The trees themselves, as in winters past,
will survive their burdening,
broken thrive. And am I less to You,
my God, than they?